The Queen to face Nazi horror for first time at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp visit

Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh will visit Bergen-Belsen memorial site in Germany in JuneReuters/Suzanne Plunkett

The Queen will bear witness to the full horror of Hitler's Nazi genocide during a four-day state visit to Germany in June when – for the first time in her long reign – she will go to the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp where Anne Frank died.

Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh will visit several memorials at the site including one dedicated to the late writer. They will be meeting survivors and liberators of the camp including people from Jewish and Christian backgrounds.

Anne and her sister Margot both died in the camp in 1945, believed to be from typhus. Anne's war time diary was published two years later after it was salvaged by one of the helpers, Miep Gies.

The powerful account of the brutal reality the 15-year-old and tens of thousands faced at the hands of the Nazis has inspired generations and was translated into many languages.

Bergen-Belsen camp held Jews, Prisoners of War, political prisoners, gypsies, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. When British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen they found around 60,000 prisoners in the camp, most of whom were seriously ill and thousands of corpses lay unburied on the camp grounds.

It is believed up to 37,600 prisoners died at the camp between May 1943 and 15 April 1945, while an estimated 70,000 died in total.

The royal visit will also include attending a state banquet with Chancellor Angela Merkel and meeting President Joachim Gauck and his partner Daniela Schadt in Frankfurt.

The entrance to the Bergen-Belsen Memorial at the site of the former concentration campReuters